WRA CH93

Chu Ren had come to understand Bai Qi completely: Bai Qi wasn’t fierce or venomous at all—he was just a harmless little white snake masquerading as a cobra. Even when pushed to the point of losing control, he wouldn’t bite Chu Ren.

Bai Qi’s waist felt ready to snap. It turned out that against humans, spirits were surprisingly frail; no wonder the Guide to Adulthood insisted on keeping up a convincing disguise.

One moment Bai Qi thought about how Chu Ren had exercised restraint for ten whole years and deserved some leeway, and the next he remembered that Chu Ren hadn’t exactly lacked physical intimacy over those ten years either—he had just been practicing the principle of “smaller portions, more frequent meals.”

He really wanted to shake off the brazen human pinning him down.

How he eventually drifted off to sleep, Bai Qi had no idea. In any case, by the next morning, that terrarium was nowhere to be seen.

Chu Ren had only rented the snake temporarily; he hadn’t bought it. He only wanted his spouse.

Bai Qi kept his eyes closed, letting his vitality slowly recover. When he opened them, he saw Chu Ren walking in carrying a bowl of steamed egg custard.

What a pity it was late August. Otherwise, he would have insisted on hibernating for an entire month.

Chu Ren scooped up a spoonful of custard to feed him. “Wife, am I impressive or what?”

Bai Qi: “…Mm.”

“If I had known earlier—” Chu Ren caught himself and stopped mid-sentence. Continuing would make it sound like he was lacking now.

“Known what earlier?”

“Nothing.”

“Known that I could take so much roughhousing, so you could have brought out your prime peak performance back when you were eighteen?”

“I’m still in my prime,” Chu Ren insisted.

“Right,” Bai Qi chuckled softly. “Haven’t you noticed you haven’t really changed at all?”

Chu Ren paused to consider it. “Really, wife? I’m worried I’m being blindly overconfident. Your instincts are sharper—give it to me straight.”

“You’re eighteen every single year. Happy now?”

“Twenty-eight is a bit more grounded and steady. Wife, we won’t do it tonight. You get to rest.”

Bai Qi’s gaze flickered, though he hesitated to speak.

Chu Ren suddenly recalled that long ago, Bai Qi had mentioned sneaking into his house to watch TV. He hadn’t pressed the issue back then and hadn’t truly believed it either, since the sofa had shown no signs of use.

“Wife, when you used to watch TV alone at my place, were you hiding under the sofa?”

“Yeah,” Bai Qi replied. “You can sleep there and hide there.”

Chu Ren inhaled deeply. “For how many years?”

“Five years.”

“You slept on the floor the entire time?”

“Without the host’s permission, how could I get on the sofa?”

“Permission granted! What’s a sofa compared to anything? From now on, you sleep on my abs. That’s genuine leather too.”

Bai Qi remarked breezy and unbothered, “Oh, then let me test it out.”

Chu Ren climbed into bed, cast the TV screen, and let Bai Qi coil across his abs to watch television.

Trying it out, Bai Qi felt thoroughly satisfied. After cultivating a human form, he wasn’t particularly eager to shift back into a snake anyway; human senses were far richer and vastly more comfortable.

When Zhou Sicheng was looking into getting a vasectomy, Bai Qi forbade Chu Ren from jumping on the bandwagon.

“Animals and plants are different.”

“Ten years and nothing happened anyway.”

“You only just unleashed your full power for a couple of days, and already you’re looking to retreat?”

Caught between a rock and a hard place, Chu Ren could only obediently listen to his spouse.

In October, Xiang Zhen gave birth to a little Sunflower Seed baby, and Dou Manning also became pregnant with a Coffee Bean baby.

Chu Ren counted his blessings that Bai Qi wasn’t pregnant. After all, his spouse was an animal, and animal pregnancies were inherently far more precarious than those of plants.

This year, Bai Qi’s hibernation set in unusually early; starting from mid-October, he grew drowsy and lethargic.

Chu Ren no longer dared to be as clueless as before, forcing his hibernating spouse to tag along to the office.

After indulging through the end of summer, Chu Ren reined himself in. He had researched serpentine biology and realized that holding his cold-blooded spouse for half an hour in winter just to warm him up was actually defying the laws of nature.

Their frequency dropped from daily to once every three days.

Bai Qi ate very little during winter. Though Chu Ren’s heart ached for him, he didn’t force Bai Qi awake just to eat.

In the ten years they had been together, Bai Qi had never spent a season this carefree and lawless. At one point, he even shifted into a snake and dozed for seven days straight inside the cozy little winter nest Chu Ren had bought for him.

When he finally woke up, Chu Ren was looking at him with immense resentment.

“Slept my fill,” Bai Qi murmured. “No more hibernating this year. I’ll keep you company at work, deal?”

Chu Ren grumbled, “Wife, your credit score couldn’t even rent a portable power bank right now.”

Bai Qi coughed lightly. “Hubby, I’m hungry.”

Chu Ren immediately served up a feast of eggs and meats. “Let me feel. Your tummy must be completely hollowed out.”

“Feel for yourself.”

Bai Qi stood up and let him touch. The moment Chu Ren’s palm pressed against his abdomen, both their expressions shifted simultaneously.

His belly wasn’t hollowed out at all; instead, it rose in a subtle, distinct mound.

This was… pregnancy!

A momentary flutter of panic crossed Bai Qi’s mind. What was going on? Did spirits only conceive in clusters?

In this precise moment, someone finally realized that Xiang Zhen’s claim—“If your hubby is potent, it’s super easy to get pregnant”—wasn’t just the chatter of a doting partner, but an instinct etched into a spirit’s very bones.

Chu Ren felt as though the sky were caving in. Whose spouse goes through pregnancy without eating or drinking?! He had starved until he was skin and bones!

Bai Qi remained remarkably calm. “Your business partner’s wife was the same.”

Chu Ren choked on his words. “But his wife is a plant! He can absorb sunlight and rain!”

Bai Qi was purely running on empty.

Chu Ren simply stopped going to the office altogether and forbade Bai Qi from stepping outside, holing up at home to guard against heavenly tribulations. Back when Dou Manning had become pregnant, Chu Ren had already reinforced the lightning rods both at home and at the corporate headquarters.

During the pregnancy, Bai Qi actually lost all desire to hibernate. Snakes reproduced in summer; perhaps due to carrying eggs, his body mistakenly assumed it was summertime outside.

And when it was summer, certain urges naturally followed.

Animal spirits had a far rougher time than plant spirits.

Chu Ren’s pacing returned to his area of expertise: slow, gentle, and unhurried.

Ten years of honing his craft had all been preparation to serve a pregnant Bai Qi.

Effort was never wasted in the eyes of fate.

“Wife, does that feel good?” Chu Ren murmured.

Pregnancy softened Bai Qi’s demeanor immensely; even wearing his sharpest rimless glasses, he couldn’t summon his past aloof chill. Even so, Chu Ren still slipped the glasses onto him, fastening a red cord around his neck adorned with a tiny pendant of a pure-gold zodiac snake.

Bai Qi was loath to admit that his toes, hooked on either side of Chu Ren’s waist, gripped the bedsheets tightly, flushed with a damp, dewy pink.

Whenever his strength gave out, Bai Qi’s arms went limp, resting against Chu Ren’s shoulders as he leaned forward. The red cord shifted, and the golden pendant swung downward.

Chu Ren parted his lips and caught the tiny gold charm.

“Hold on, wife.”

The moment Bai Qi’s rounded belly brushed against Chu Ren’s abs, the length of the cord was just right to deliver the little gold snake straight into Chu Ren’s mouth.

This was the absolute limit; Bai Qi had to sit upright, unable to lean excessively against his husband.

As the belly grew larger, the red cord was adjusted longer and longer.

Chu Ren never let anyone else catch a glimpse of his spouse looking like this.

Chu Ren went out of his way to stew chicken soups and all manner of poultry, but Bai Qi went from naturally loving meat to wanting to throw up at the mere scent of it.

Massaging his temples, Bai Qi finally understood what Xiang Zhen must have felt when looking at Zhou Sicheng back then.

“No more, hubby.”

“If the egg gets too big, it’ll be impossible to lay.”

He tossed the comment out casually, but Chu Ren was terrified out of his wits.

Right—Bai Qi was different from plant spirits. A sunflower could ask a coffee spirit to pluck out the seeds, but Bai Qi had to give birth all on his own.

“Is it big?” Chu Ren crouched down, cautiously feeling Bai Qi’s belly, spreading his five fingers to measure it. “Baby, let’s make a deal: just grow until you can fit under my palm, and that’ll be plenty.”

The little baby seemed remarkably obedient, growing at a snail’s pace.

Xiao Kui Bao had calculated the due date for the coffee tree, but couldn’t do the same for Bai Qi.

Chu Ren harbored a dark envy toward Shen Ku, who had been able to cross the river by following Zhou Sicheng’s footsteps.

When the Coffee Bean baby was born, Bai Qi was present on the scene. Because he was pregnant himself, he didn’t assist in the delivery, mainly standing by to guard against unexpected mishaps.

With both spirits now busy caring for their own newborns, hiring another spirit to stay over and assist with the birth like Zhou Sicheng had done was entirely out of the question.

On the night of May 7th.

Before going to sleep, Bai Qi felt a faint, dull ache in his lower abdomen. He kept quiet about it, worried Chu Ren would blow things out of proportion and summon a crowd in the dead of night.

At 2:00 AM, Bai Qi shifted into his serpentine form, coiling atop Chu Ren’s abs to give birth in absolute silence.

Chu Ren had grown accustomed to his spouse’s sudden transformations; even in deep sleep, his hands instinctively cupped gently around the serpent’s body.

Snakes preferred laying eggs amidst quiet, secure piles of rocks.

Laying a single egg took merely tens of seconds to a minute.

Finally, drenched in sweat, Bai Qi slipped out from beneath the quilt, shifting back into human form to hydrate.

On the nightstand rested an empty plate—the remains of the strawberries Chu Ren had brought him before bed.

Gulping down water with one hand, Bai Qi lifted the blanket with the other, picked up the snake egg resting on Chu Ren’s stomach, and casually placed it onto the plate.

Unlike a chicken egg, a snake egg had a soft, leathery shell—plump, milky-white, an elongated oval slightly smaller than a hen’s egg. It required roughly thirty days of external incubation before hatching.

The moment the blanket was lifted, Chu Ren snapped awake. Reaching out instinctively, he found the bed beside him empty, jolting him awake as if struck by lightning.

A thin sheen of birth fluids coated his abs. Bai Qi pulled a couple of tissues and tossed them over. “Wipe yourself down.”

Chu Ren opened his eyes to find his spouse’s belly had flattened completely, a cold gust of panic rushing through his mind. Unsure where the egg had been laid and feeling the slick fluid on his hands, he didn’t dare move carelessly for fear of crushing it: “Wife, how are you? Where’s the egg?!”

Bai Qi pointed toward the plate. “Right there.”

Chu Ren stared in disbelief at that tiny, snow-white egg, practically leaping out of bed: “Why didn’t you wake me up?! I… I slept too heavily. I’m sorry, wife.”

“Took less than a minute. What would I wake you for?”

Once he confirmed his spouse was unharmed, Chu Ren fed him water while staring helplessly at the egg on the fruit plate, which resembled an unopened white button mushroom. “Wife, do we just leave it like this?”

Bai Qi arched an eyebrow. “Didn’t I tell you? My species doesn’t brood eggs.”

“Then do I incubate it?”

Bai Qi shook his head. “No. The temperature would be too high for it. The room’s humidity and temperature are just right; leave it as it is.”

Bai Qi lay back down, leisurely and relaxed.

Chu Ren looked at his spouse, then at the baby egg, and decisively dialed Zhou Sicheng.

Dou Manning had just given birth, so it was poor form to disturb them. But the Sunflower Seed baby was already six months old; he could ask Xiang Zhen for guidance.

He needed his brother-in-law to come check on his spouse—or check on his son.

Bai Qi couldn’t understand Chu Ren’s frantic anxiety at all. The month during which a snake baby developed inside its shell was the easiest, most worry-free month a father could ask for. Instead of catching up on sleep, what on earth was Chu Ren fussing over?

Bai Qi remarked languidly, “Calling at this hour—as if Zhou Sicheng would actually pick up.”

“I’m calling anyway.”

“Zhenzhen is already asleep. Let’s sleep too.”

Chu Ren dialed the number.

Unexpectedly, Zhou Sicheng actually picked up, sounding remarkably pleasant without a trace of impatience: “Is something the matter?”

“Bai Qi gave birth. Can my brother-in-law come take a look?”

Xiang Zhen seemed to overhear the exchange from the background: “I’m on my way!”

Faint baby babble drifted through the receiver.

The corner of Bai Qi’s mouth curved up. He looked at Chu Ren. “Do you know why Zhou Sicheng’s attitude was so good?”

“Because I joined the CEO Mutual Aid Society?”

“Because the little Sunflower Seed baby isn’t asleep yet and still needs his daddy to play with him.” Bai Qi pointed at the quiet egg. “Chu Ren, cherish this stretch of time where you can still sleep through the night.”

“Either way, I’m not getting any sleep tonight.” Chu Ren grabbed a damp towel to wipe Bai Qi down, finishing with a tender kiss on his forehead. “Wife, you worked hard. Go to sleep first; I’ll watch the baby.”

Half an hour later.

Xiang Zhen arrived carrying his son. Looking at the baby whose eyes darted around curiously, Chu Ren saw that Bai Qi had been spot-on: the couple was indeed still awake tending to their child.

Bai Qi had already drifted off to sleep. Xiang Zhen sat by the bedside, gently channeling solar energy into him to help him rest more peacefully.

Snakes were yin-natured creatures, so the energy couldn’t be infused too aggressively, especially when he was naturally dehydrated post-delivery.

Zhou Sicheng stood a short distance away, holding the Sunflower Seed baby.

At six months old, the little Sunflower Seed’s salivary glands were developing and his baby teeth were preparing to erupt. Compounded by being an absolute glutton, the combination resulted in an endless stream of drool.

Finishing the energy transfer, Xiang Zhen realized the baby had gone uncharacteristically quiet. Looking up, he saw the little Sunflower Seed staring intently down at the snake egg on the fruit plate, lips pressed tightly together, drool cascading down his chin in a steady stream.

！！！

That is not a steamed milk bun!

Xiang Zhen hastily dabbed away his son’s drool. Baby, do not drool over the snake baby!

If you do, Uncle Chu won’t let you play with the snake baby in the future!

Chu Ren humbly sought advice: “What do we do with the snake baby?”

Clamping a hand over his son’s mouth, Xiang Zhen said, “Just leave it there and don’t touch it. Keep an eye on it and wait for it to hatch.”

Chu Ren: “…”

The parenting domain was a total blank slate; why hadn’t Zhou Sicheng mobilized the SCI journals yet?

And why on earth had he left a fruit plate sitting on the nightstand before bed?! It had the little Sunflower Seed drooling all over himself!